Download Irish novelist and playwright, one of the great names of Absurd

The Function of Memory in Samuel Beckett’s
Play Not I
By
Dr. Mustafa AL- Samara’y
Irbid Private University
‫البحث‬
‫منشور في مجلة بابل لعلوم االنسانيه‬
6002 ‫ ايلول‬3 ‫العدد‬
2
Abstract
The paper is concerned with Samuel Beckett and his play Not I. The play
is basically a flow of memory spoken by Mouth to a silent Auditor.
Memory begins its flow before the curtain rises and the monologue
continues for fifteen minutes. These fragmented memories are supposed
to
cover
a
span
of
seventy
years
of
life.
Not I, one of the short plays Beckett wrote, demonstrates the complex
polysemy, overlaying of dramatic significance and texture that he
achieves through the focus on the erosion of memory. The whole play
focuses on the past of the old woman from the first moment of her
premature birth to the present moment .The presence of the old woman is
deformed too. In fact, we can see only her mouth on the stage. The paper
is of two parts; the first is about the writer and his works and the second
is about the function of memory in the play.
‫ملخص البحث‬
‫هذا البحث يتعلق بمسرحية صاموئيل بكت لست انا والمسرحية المذكوره في االساس هي سيل‬
‫ويبدا سيل الذكريات قبل ان ترفع‬. ‫من الذكريات يقدمها فم يظهر على المسرح بصحبة مستمع‬
‫ ومن المفترض ان تغطي هذه الذكريات‬.‫الستاره ويستمر المونولوج لمده خمسة عشر دقيقه‬
‫ومسرحيه لست انا هي احدى قصار بكت التي‬.‫مدة سبعين عاما من عمر السيده التي تخاطبنا‬
‫تركز المسرحيه على ماضي‬.‫يحاول من خاللها اظهار مايحدث لنا حين تتعرض الذاكره للتاكل‬
‫ كما نالحظ ان حاضر هذه السيده هو حاضر‬. ‫هذه السيده من والدتها حتى الوقت الحاضر‬
‫ هذا البحث يتكون من جزئيين األول عن‬.‫ وهذا يظهر من خالل التركيز على الفم فقط‬.‫مشوه‬
.‫الكاتب واعماله والثاني هو عن دور الذاكره في هذه المسرحية‬
3
The author
Samuel Beckett is an Irish novelist and playwright. He is one of the great
names of the Absurd Theatre with Eugene Ionesco although a recent
study regards Beckett as a postmodernist. His plays are concerned with
human suffering and survival and his characters are struggling with
meaninglessness and the world of human memory. Beckett was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. In his writings for the theatre,
Beckett showed influence of burlesque, vaudeville, the music hall,
commedia dell'arte, and the silent-film style of such figures as Keaton
and Chaplin.
Samuel Beckett was born on Good Friday, April 13,1906 near Dublin,
Ireland. He was educated at the Portora Royal School and Trinity
College, Dublin, where he took a B.A. in French and Italian. Beckett
worked as a teacher in Belfast and lecturer in English at Ecole Normale
Superieure in Paris. During this time he became a friend of James Joyce,
taking dictation and copying down parts of what would eventually
become Finnegans Wake (1939). He also translated a fragment of that
book into French. Beckett made his way through Ireland, France,
England, and Germany, all the while writing poems and stories and doing
odd jobs to get by. In the course of his journeys he no doubt came into
contact with many tramps and wanderers. These acquaintances would be
later translated into some of his finest characters.
As a poet, Beckett made his first appearance in 1930 with Whoroscope, a
ninety-eight – line poem accompanied by seventeen footnotes. The main
topic of the poem is Descartes meditating on the subject of time, the
transiency of life, and the approach of death. It was followed with a
collection of essays, Proust (1931), and a novel More Bricks Than Kicks
(1934). From 1933 to 1936 he lived in London but finally settled down in
Paris. Shortly thereafter, he was stabbed in the street by a man who had
approached him asking for money. He learnt later in the hospital that he
had a perforated lung. After his recovery, he went to visit his assailant in
prison. When asked why he had attacked him, the prisoner replied “Je ne
sais pas, Monseieur”, a phrase hauntingly reminiscent of some of the lost
and confused souls that would populate the writer’s later works.
4
When the World War II broke out, Beckett was in Ireland but he returned
to Paris and Joined a Resistance network. In Beckett’s own words “ I was
in Ireland when the war broke out in 1939 and I then returned to
France I preferred France in war to Ireland in Peace.”1 Sought by the
Nazis, he fled with his French wife to Southern France, where they
remained in hiding two and half years in the village of Roussillon.
Beckett worked as a country laborer and wrote WATT, his second novel,
which was published in 1953 and was the last of his novels written
originally in English. It portrays the futile search for Watt (What) for
understanding in the house of Mr. Knott (Not), who continually changes
shapes. Eugene Webb says that “ the story of Watt’s journey to Knott’s
house, is the story of man’s quest for some kind of absolute
knowledge that will bring him peace.”2
Beckett’s fiction did not receive much critical attention till the first
performance for his play Waiting for Godot (5 Jan. 1953). Godot marks
not only the end of Beckett’s first phase of novel writing, but also the
beginning of the Beckettian drama. Beckett turned to drama as a source
of relaxation: “ I turned to writing plays to relieve myself of the awful
depression the prose led me into…Life at that time was too
demanding, too terrible, and I thought theatre would be discretion.”3
Samuel Beckett’s first play, Eleutheria, (a Latin word means freedom),
mirrors his own search for freedom revolving around man’s efforts to cut
himself loose from his family and social obligations. His first real
triumph, however, came on January 5, 1953 when Waiting for Godot was
premiered at the Theatre de Babylone. This play brought Beckett his
international fame and established him as one of the leading names of the
theatre of the Absurd. Beckett secured his position as a master dramatist
on April 3, 1957 when his second masterpiece, Endgame, was premiered
(in French) at the Royal Court Theatre in London. Endgme continues
Godot’s cast of four characters. While three of them have become
immobile, the fourth one has been restricted to mobility. With Not I,
1
Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett A Biography, (Picador Pan Books 1980), p.235.
2
Eugene Webb, Samuel Beckett: A Study of his Novels, (London: Peter Owen, 1970),
p.47.
3
Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett A Biography, (Picador Pan Books1980), p287.
5
Beckett moves close on to his seventies and the central character in the
play is a woman in her seventy.
Not I
Samuel Beckett was in Tunisia sitting in a café when he saw “ a figure
completely covered in a djellaba, leaning against a wall. It seemed to
him that the figure was in a position of intense listening. What could
that figure be listening to?”4 Only later Beckett had learned that this
figure leaning against the wall was an Arab woman waiting for her child
who attended a nearby school.
Beckett’s play Not I posits an absurd world which has been reached
through intolerable suffering of Mouth through out her seventy years of
misery. Through memory Mouth recalls her unbearable suffering which is
the pivot of the play. Mouth is on the final verge of decline and her
deformed memories symbolize the inextricable imprisonment of Man in
the vast expanse of the universe where he ceaselessly strives with the
misery of being mortal to endure what cannot be cured. Mouth in Not I
represents the Beckettians who have always been isolated from one
another and from the sources of history, society and their own past. The
only room left to them is the engulfment in these fragmented pieces of
memories which lack credibility.
Not I runs about fifteen minutes and is of two characters: Mouth and
Auditor. This play makes no mention of “I” except in its title. Mouth
looks like Krapp, Henry, and Joe. She is a loner and unable to recall
complete images of what happened in her life. But, “none of Beckett’s
creation for the stage is so literally disembodied as the Mouth who
speaks unendingly in Not I.”5 In her flow of memories Mouth confessed
that her past was unbearable and she could not stay in silent any more.
Mouth desperately needs memory to recall the suffering she went
through. Perhaps, the buzzing is a reference to memory which is the
igniter of the miserable past of the woman “till another thought… oh
4
Enoch Brater: “Dada, Surrealism, and the Genesis of Not I.” Modern Drama,
XVIII: 2,1975 pp50.
5
Ibid p49
6
long after…sudden flash …very foolish really but…what? the
buzzing?…yes all the time the buzzing…so called… in the
ears…though of course actually …not in the ears at all…in the skull
…dull roar in the skull…”6 The buzzing is repeated dozen times in the
Play and the old woman is terrified to acknowledge that there is no
release for her from the roaring of memory in her skull. Mouth focuses on
memory, or through memory on the condition of her past, and solitude
becomes a natural accompaniment of this inward looking. Thus, the
dialogic process is replaced by a non-logical, episodic approach;
“yes …whether standing, or sitting…or kneeling, or lying…but the
brain still… still…in away.’’7 The Mouth that recalls the sad memories
and suffering of the old woman does not mention any complete story in
its fragmented narration. However, but the hysterical screams,
“What,…who…no …she.”8 which are recalled five times through the
play, show the desire not to divulge her personal sad memories. The
Mouth’s constant use of the third person portrays the unbearable suffering
of the old woman and the fear of confronting her own sadness while
recalling the past.
Nevertheless Mouth believes that her seventy years have been almost a
dead existence for she could never recall any memories when she had
experienced intense pleasure. Her life from childhood had been a
monotonous drudgery. Mouth’s flow of memories portrays to the
audience a fragmented past of a bastard child. She had been deserted by
her parents and denied “love such as normally vented on
the…speechless infant …in the home…no.”9 The roaring of memory in
the skull of Mouth recalls the first moment of birth: “out…into this
world… this world … a tiny little thing …before its time…in a
godfor-…what?…girl? before her time… godforsaken hole
called…called…no matter parents unknown ….unheard of…”10
These memories express her unbearable anguish over the past which has
no love of any kind. But Mouth could not hint at any autobiographical
element in her narration because time has eroded her memory. Time in
Not I and many of Beckett’s looks like a destroyer of human memory. It
seems as if time has passed through his characters and left nothing, but
remains of human body and eroded memory. What really happened to the
old woman in the field is not clear to us. “When Alan Schneider asked
6
Samuel Beckett, The Complete Dramatic works, (Faber and Faber, London and
Boston 1986), pp.376.
7
Ibid p367.
8
Ibid p 379
9
Ibid p377
10
Ibid p376
7
if his “she” was raped in the field (‘just as the odd time…in her
life…when clearly intended to be having pleasure …she was in fact
…having none …not the slightest) Becket was surprised at his
question; he characteristically would not answer”.11
But Mouth ,one of the Beckettians, has a good memory compared to other
characters. Her memory swings to and fro like a pendulum between her
past and the present in an attempt to portray her suffering. She sustains
herself to her memory amidst uncertainty .She shows the ability to make
a connection with these unilluminated events and fragmented images,
which have a sort of connection to her past. In her attempts to peel the
skin off the past, Mouth tries to reach the core of events. The play
“creates five scenes that summarize human experience: 1) a loveless
premature birth, 2) survival through silent list-shopping at the
supermarket, 3) the presence of tears in the palm of the hand and the
awareness of owing those tears,4)the silence under court-room
questioning, and 5) five times evoked, the April morning when this
late spring speech erupted.”12 In these scenes the permanent elements
are the suffering of Mouth and the eroded memory that remains
mysterious, sketchy and distinct. This technique has been accompanied
by the reduction of spatial dimension. In Not I Beckett distills the spatial
presence into almost its zero point. The whole play seems to take place in
human skull. However, Beckett knew that such distillation of the spatial
element might convert the play into a non-dramatic works. Thus when
Alan Schneider praises No I, Beckett replies in a letter to him saying:
“thanks for your reaction to Not I. Encouraging to my hope that it
may be theatre after all in spite of all.”13 In Rockaby ( 1981) during the
flow of memory the face of the woman gives a company to memory
slightly swaying in and out of light. This movement in the play is
accompanied by memory to create spatial dimension to the play. Some of
the movements made by some characters in space perhaps suggest
physical departure from spatial existence. In Endgame (1954) Clov wants
to leave Hamm and Krapp left his den to his off stage room.
This distillation of space achieves a very spectacular effect which makes
memory an important part of the character without which it cannot
sustain itself on the stage. This is an important part, specifically in the
theatre plays, because the positing of the characters and their movement
from scene to scene and episode to episode is an additional dimension
.Enouch Brater: “Dada, Surrealism, and the Genesis of Not I . “Modern Drama,
XVIII: 2,1975.p54.
12
RubyCohn,Back to Beckett,(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press,1974), pp.214-215.
13
Deirdre Bair Samuel Beckett :A Biography,(Picador Pan Books 1980),p.528.
11
8
which cannot be available to a radio play. Characters relate significantly
to the words that thy speak and the actions they perform. At times, the
two may also contradict each other and this points out the gaps as in
Waiting for Godot. At times, the movement of the character(s) builds up
an image which highlights the contrast as in Krapp’s Last Tape.
In several ways, Beckett’s development as a dramatist is a continuous
exploration of the ideas he began to explore and work on when he wrote
his commentary on the French novelist Marcel Proust. In his plays, this
exploration assumed a somewhat different role than in his fiction. In his
plays, space was an additional factor to consider. While emphasizing and
developing the non–logical, monologue oriented, introspective
contraction of reality, Beckett also had to relate reality to the theatrical
demands. The result is that the theatre is shifted to the mind or the voice
of the character. Beckett’s use of memory also affects language and the
pattern of dialogue. His people don’t talk to one another but more often to
their own selves. They continue a conversation, which they had begun
some time in the past. Maddy is not really talking to others in All That
Fall Vladimir and Estragon are often talking at cross-purposes in Waiting
For Godot and Krapp only replays the tapes recorded at various stages in
his life in Krapp’s Last Tape.
An examination of the past adjusts itself more naturally to narrative rather
than dramatic technique. However, by using memory for his dramatic
works, Beckett achieved two things; first he questioned the traditional
view of dramaturgy and second he created a new kind of drama. Through
his plays he began to look at character, action and structure. In Not I,
Beckett condenses what he has stated in many of his plays and novels and
brings together in one neat set of associations themes he has developed
more extensively in other plays birth, memory, and the past. Beckett’s
plays are a dramatic portrayal of Man’s predicament and his suffering,
which is a fundamental attribute of existence. The plays demonstrate
different aspects of human suffering loneliness, confinement and
meaninglessness where memory is the only support available to the
characters.
Almost all Beckett’s plays have emphasized the relationship between
memory and reality. In their attempt to locate themselves in time the
Beckettians try to explain the relationship each has (or believes he has) to
his past. But their attempt collapses because one is never quite certain
whether what the characters recollect is reality or illusion. Even the
characters themselves are not sure whether they create stories or recollect
actual events of their past. The common features of the Beckettians are
their perceptions or understanding that fall beyond reality. This
indirectness of perception leads them to a sketchy or hazy portrayal of
9
reality. One might agree with Tom Wingfield’s statement that “the play
is memory and being a memory play it is… not realistic.”14
14
Harry W. Smith “Tennesse Willams and Joe Mielziner: The Memory Plays”
Theatre Survey,XXIII:2(Nov.1982)p.224.
10
Primary Sources
1. Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett A Biography,(Picdor Pan Books
1980)
2. Enoch Brater, “Dada Surrealism and the Genesis of Not
I.”,Modren Drama,XVIII:2,(1975),pp377-378.
3. Eugene
Webb,
Samuel
Beckett:A
Study
of
his
Novels,(London:Peter Owen 1970),p.47.
4. Harry W Smith”Temmesse Williams and Joe Mieliziner:The
Memory Plays,”Theatre Survey,XXIII:2(Nov>1982)p.224
5. RubyCohn,Back to Beckett( Princeton,NewJersey:Princeton
University Press,1974),pp.214-215.
6. Samuel Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works,(Faber and
Faber,London and Boston 1986),pp.376-383.
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